


The Elect

by orphan_account



Category: White Collar
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-08
Updated: 2010-09-08
Packaged: 2017-11-01 23:05:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/362263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Who sends spam to the FBI?" How Peter and Neal put themselves back together after "Point Blank."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Elect

A/N: Subtitles via Lykke Li's "Until We Bleed." Spoilers for "Point Blank," plus my version of what happened to certain characters after.

 

1\. _I'm naked_

He gets an e-mail to begin his week that starts out, "Dear God's Elect." He reads it out loud to Neal and Neal laughs.

"You're probably as much an angel as any of us, Peter," Neal says, making the sign of the cross in front of him, mockingly. Easily.

He reads on, about the imaginary woman's rich dead uncle and her desire to send him fifteen billion dollars, because of his superior virtue. "She spelled Ouagadougou wrong."

"I was there once." Neal is propping his feet up on Peter's desk. Neal has a desk of his own but he'd never put his feet up there. He comes in here, disarranges papers, puts his feet up. Neal's own desk is neat as a pin.

"In Burkina Faso?" Peter raises an eyebrow. "Is this one of those stories we don't tell?"

"Nah," Neal said. "This was right after Kate and I ..." He stops.

"You know what? I think it is one of these stories we don't tell."

Neal has a desk of his own but in the past three months he's spent all his time in Peter's office, disarranging papers and talking about baseball teams he doesn't follow and football teams he doesn't care about, calling up El from Peter's phone and stringing all Peter's paperclips together.

Peter started keeping this secret, this music-box secret, because Neal was still so brittle, still unable to look him in the face, and Peter was afraid it would break him. Peter started keeping this secret to protect him.

And then he kept it to protect himself, because he knew what Neal would say. He imagined it nightly, breathing in the thick peat smoke of whiskey to try to help him sleep. He imagined how the conversation would go, at night when he couldn't stop it, and sometimes it was throwing things, and sometimes it was cutting off the tracker in the middle of the night and disappearing, and sometimes it was just bitter rage and all the words Peter knew he deserved.

He shuts the laptop. "Who sends spam to the FBI?"

 

2\. _I'm numb_

When Neal does find out, his reaction doesn't conform to any one of the seven scenarios Peter has mapped out in his head, the scenarios for which Peter has prepared responses and strategies and perfectly logical progressions of events. When they're done, with OPR and departmental psych and getting Neal's anklet re-keyed and the various affidavits that have to be signed when one's partner pulls a Tarzan in a museum, Neal simply accepts Jones' not-offer of a ride home and leaves.

Jones reports, slightly exasperated at being woken up at 4 a.m., that Neal has stayed at home all night. He comes in to work the next morning and is polite, and courteous, and helpful on this prostitution scam the Russians are running out of a warehouse in the Bronx.

He answers Peter's questions and smiles at Diana and accepts the espresso Peter brings him with a neutral expression of thanks rather than the contempt Peter feels he is due. The contempt Peter feels for himself.

It goes on for a week and a half like this. Polite conversation at work, banter about something in the newspaper, and rebuffs of his dinner invitations that always make sense -- visiting Mozzie in the hospital, or a meal with June, or some reading he's been meaning to catch up on. There's never a single hint of punishment in anything Neal says or does. Never a single sidelong glance, a glare, a whisper.

In fact, Neal goes out of his way to tone down his usual theatrics and work within the bounds Peter sets for him. It's his version of an apology, for the file, for Diana's apartment, for all the things both of them are choking on. Neal makes an effort to be careful, to be correct, to be the asset Peter hoped he would be when they set out on this twisted road a year ago.

They now have the perfect working relationship. No lies. No secrets.

No confusion.

Peter thinks if it keeps up he will shoot someone.

 

3\. _I'm stupid_

They arrest the Russian pimp, but not before he kills two of the girls, and the man running the scam has dropped off the face of the earth, the way they always do. Jones makes noises about Interpol and looks at Peter pityingly. Diana disappears the instant he tells her she can and he hears her on the phone to Christy before the elevator doors even close.

It's good that she has someone, he thinks, on nights like this.

Peter rests his forehead on his desk and closes his eyes. They found the second girl's head in the sewer.

"Where's Elizabeth tonight?" Neal asks, lightly, as though Peter's wife is someone he met once at the office Christmas party and hasn't seen since.

"Out of town, a conference," Peter replies, lifting his head.

Neal is leaning against the doorway, looking at some indeterminate point over Peter's left shoulder. His shirt isn't even rumpled. His shoes still shine. Peter feels like the inside of an ashtray, and his coat is in evidence because the first girl's brains are all over it.

Peter knows if he turned around he would see Neal's expression reflected in the thick black window glass. He stays where he is. Every inch of his body aches. Inside and out.

"Did you know Burkina Faso was once called the Republic of Upper Volta?" Neal asks, and there's something in his voice, some hesitation, that Peter hasn't heard there in weeks.

"I did not know that."

"French protectorate," Neal expands, coming into the room and standing next to Peter's chair, close enough for Peter to feel the warmth of his body. "République de Haute-Volta. Rolls right off the tongue."

They're quiet for a moment. Peter thinks about apologizing. He thinks about a way out of this. He thinks about the rules he's broken, the shadows he's slipped into, and how very tired he is of being what Neal sees when Neal looks at him.

He stares at the blinking light on Neal's anklet and thinks about how much room there is in a two-mile radius to get lost.

They go back to almost normal, after that.

 

4\. _I'm staying_

The girl the Russians put in a dog cage hugs Peter at the airport and he finds it hard to see, all of a sudden. Neal averts his eyes tactfully while Peter drags a hand across his face, and then the girl and her grateful friends are gone, down the walkway and onto the plane home.

"Why do we always do this?" Neal asks, almost companionably, as they walk back to the car. The parking garage is damp and smells vaguely like gasoline. "See them off? Why do we do that?"

He doesn't have to answer but he does it anyway, reaching out and grabbing Neal's shoulder, hard. "Because if we didn't --" he's stumbling now, suddenly, incoherent "-- if we didn't see this part, if we didn't see the little good we sometimes do, we wouldn't be able to stand the rest of it."

And then they're in each other's arms and it's as much a fight as an embrace, Peter pushing _I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry_ into Neal's skin like a brand, Neal's hands scrabbling at his back and his arms and his coat, _you son of a bitch, I trusted you, you son of a bitch, you son of a bitch_ , and then somehow Neal has pushed his back to the wet concrete wall, behind a pillar where no one can see them.

A plane roars overhead, and the sound rumbles through them like a wave coming in to shore, and Peter doesn't recognize the sound that comes from Neal's throat, after he whispers, just once, "Forgive me." He doesn't say, what for. He can't say.

He doesn't know.

"I already have," Neal is saying.

"I forgave you the second I found out."

Another plane, and the screech of tires, and then just the sound of their breathing, as they come untangled and Peter makes a halfhearted attempt to straighten his clothes. They're not far from the car, so they walk in that direction, Neal a little ahead, both of them stepping carefully as though the ground around them was covered in broken glass.

A.


End file.
